I often say to myself, when it seems to me there are obvious improvements we could be making in public policy,
"If only they'd asked me......".

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Britain Calling

Ha-Joon Chang has a nice article in The Guardian, examining Britain's disastrous experience with austerity: a fall in income for millions of citizens, and growing inequality as an unreasonably high share of the nation's income goes to the top 1% . We in the US have had somewhat the same experience*, yet in both countries the dominant narrative remains the same: debt is bad, and deficits must be cut.

Chang counters:

The country is in desperate need of a counter narrative that shifts the
terms of debate. A government budget should be understood not just in
terms of bookkeeping but also of demand management, national cohesion
and productivity growth. Jobs and wages should not be seen simply as a
matter of people being “worth” (or not) what they get, but of better
utilising human potential and of providing decent and dignified
livelihoods.

Amen

* though in our case mitigated by the 2009-2011 stimulus, the automatic stabilizers
of food stamps and unemployment insurance, and the Fed's quantitative
easing.